Michelle Cliff
Michelle Cliff (born 2 November 1946) is a Jamaican-American poet and novelist whose notable works include No Telephone to Heaven, Abeng and Free Enterprise. Cliff also has written short stories, prose poems and works of literary criticism. Her works explore the various, complex identity problems that stem from post-colonialism, as well as the difficulty of establishing an authentic, individual identity despite race and gender constructs. Life Cliff is a bisexual who was born in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1946 and moved with her family to New York City three years later. She was educated at Wagner College and the Warburg Institute at the University of London. She has held academic positions at several colleges including Trinity College and Emory University. Cliff was a contributor to the Black feminist anthology Home Girls. As of 1999, Cliff was living in Santa Cruz, California,"Michelle Cliff" at Emory University with her partner, poet Adrienne Rich. The two have been partnered since 1976."Adrienne Rich, 1929-", a time line, credited as "Page by Chelsea Hoffman, Fall 1999", at the Drew University Women's Studies Program Web site Publications Poetry *''The Land of Look Behind: Prose and poetry''. Ithaca, NY: Firebrand, 1985. Novels *''Abeng: A novel''. Trumansburg, NY: Crossing Press, 1984; New York: Penguin, 1995. *''Free Enterprise: A novel of Mary Ellen Pleasant''. New York: Dutton, 1993. *''No Telephone to Heaven''. New York: Dutton, 1984. *''Free Enterprise''. New York: Dutton, 1993. *''Into the Interior''. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2010. Short fiction * Bodies of Water. New York: Dutton, 1990. *''The Store of a Million Items: Stories''. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998. *''Everything is Now: New and collected stories''. Minneapolis, MN: : University of Minnesota Press, 2009. Non-fiction *''Claiming an Identity They Taught Me to Despise''. Watertown, MA: Persephone Press, 1980. *''If I Could Write This in Fire'' (autobiography). Minneapolis, MN: : University of Minnesota Press, 2008. Edited *Lillian Eugenia Smith, The Winner Names the Age: A collection of writings. New York: Norton, 1978. Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.Search results = au:Michelle Cliff, WorldCat, OCLC Online Computer Library Center Inc. Web, June 5, 2014. See also * List of U.S. poets References *Cartelli, Thomas (1995) "After the Tempest: Shakespeare, Postcoloniality, and Michelle Cliff's New, New World Miranda," Contemporary Literature 36(1): 82-102. *Edmondson, Belinda (1993) "Race, Writing, and the Politics of (Re)Writing History: An Analysis of the Novels of Michelle Cliff," Callaloo 16(1): 180-191. *Lima, Maria Helena (1993) "Revolutionary Developments: Michelle Cliff's No Telephone to Heaven and Merle Collins's Angel," Ariel 24(1): 35-56. *Lionnet, Francoise (1992) "Of Mangoes and Maroons: Language, History, and the Multicultural Subject of Michelle Cliff's Abeng," in Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson, eds. De/Colonizing the Subject: The Politics of Gender in Women's Autobiography, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, pp. 321-345. *Raiskin, Judith (1994) "Inverts and Hybrids: Lesbian Rewritings of Sexual and Racial Identities," in Laura Doan, ed. The Lesbian Postmodern, New York: Columbia University Press, pp. 156-172. *Raiskin, Judith (1993) "The Art of History: An Interview with Michelle Cliff," Kenyon Review 15(1): 57-71. *Schwartz, Meryl F. (1993) "An Interview with Michelle Cliff," Contemporary Literature 34(4): 595-619. Notes External links ;Audio / video *Michelle Cliff at YouTube ;About * Michelle Cliff at Voices from the Gaps. * Michelle Cliff biography at Emory University. * Michelle Cliff in Gale Contemporary Black Biography. * In Pieces - Review of Everything is Now and If I Could Write This in Fire, Caribbean Review of Books, May 2009. Category:1946 births Category:Living people Category:American novelists Category:Lesbian writers Category:Jamaican feminists Category:Jamaican women writers Category:LGBT writers from the United States Category:LGBT people from Jamaica Category:Black feminism Category:Wagner College alumni Category:Alumni of the Warburg Institute Category:Trinity College, Hartford faculty Category:Emory University faculty Category:20th-century poets Category:20th-century women writers Category:English-language poets Category:Poets Category:Women poets